3-9 IAN Ballard Cheese

 The art of cheese-making continues to grow across the nation, and Idaho has its own boutique cheese-making family. Ballard Family Dairy & Cheese out of Gooding makes it two times a week and then markets the finished product at Farmers Markets and Co-ops throughout the West. From the extra-rich milk of their 58 Jersey cows, they took their curds into competition and won their first national award in 2004. Since that modest start they added more complex cheeses, won more national awards and are now known in cooking circles across the nation.

 Here’s co-owner Stacie Ballard: “We came here from California, didn’t know anything about cows but decided we wanted to start a dairy, grew it to about 160 cows, it got big and we looked at value added and we looked at ice cream, cheese, milk, yogurt and cheese fit what we wanted to do. We went to cheese making school in Cal-Poly, Wisconsin University and Washington State and the cheese business is wonderful.